Las Vegas — They picked locks and ripped apart laptops and other electronic gadgets to explore what's inside. They attacked circuit boards with soldering irons. And they tried to hack Minecraft.

These are hacker kids. From 8 to 16 years old, they gather at r00tz Asylum, held at the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas, to learn about cybersecurity from professionals and their peers.

R00tz Asylum lets kids "have a safe playground and an area for them to learn the basics of hacking, without getting themselves into trouble," says its cofounder, the 15-year-old hacker who goes by the name CyFi.

Evan Robertson, 10, for instance, demonstrated how his "elite social engineering skills" tricked dozens of people to connect to a WiFi hotspot and agree to terms of conditions that he says "no one in the world should agree to."

His point: People don't care enough about their online privacy.

Mollee McDuff, 13, who goes by the hacker handle Stitch, presented ways to modify Minecraft to give her more resources in the virtual worlds she creates. "The possibilities are endless with programming."